On Character Building: The Reader and the Rhetoric of Characterization in Luke-Acts

This guide to interpreting the characters in Luke-Acts, the longest and most complex of New Testament narratives, uses the latest literary-critical theory and biblical scholarship to construct an understanding of how the characters are formed and how they function in the Lukan writings. It is the author’s contention that the reader plays an important role in character building. The author illustrates this process using three representative characters or character groups: John the Baptist, the Pharisees, and Herod the Tetrarch.

John A. Darr has taught New Testament in the Theology Department at Boston College for more than three decades. He is widely recognized for designing and promoting pragmatic (audience-oriented) approaches to biblical narratives, and for pioneering studies of characterization in the gospels.